Visiting Oz

By C.L. Beck
© 2007

Thanks to Shirley Bahlmann, (who’s a talented writer and a sweetheart of a friend) I was given a one day opportunity last week to attend the BYU writers' workshop. I felt like I’d glimpsed Oz and had hobnobbed with my fellow wizards. Except I was in Provo. And they were writers.

But you get my drift … I was untouchable!

Then I went to my mailbox and was greeted with rejections. Four. Count them … four rejections. Form letters without even a personalized note among them.

Rejections, bah! I laugh in their face.

Dorothy Gale, of Kansas, kept going until she was clicking her ruby slippers to go home. I'm sure I can do the same. A glimpse of Oz isn't enough. I plan to stand inside its hallowed halls—despite the fact that my ruby slippers are actually turquoise flip-flops and Toto is a Welsh Corgi who's eaten a plastic munchkin and just thrown up on my carpet.

If, like me, you’ve recently been treated to a few rejections, keep your focus on Oz. And when the wicked witch’s monkey grabs you by the hair and tries to steal your courage, remember this quote:

“The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it; so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. Many a person has given up at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success. As the tide goes all the way out, so too does it come all the way in. Prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence and effort can turn a hopeless failure into a glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.”
(Quoted from Bits and Pieces on Persistence by Rob Gilbert, Pg. 17).